I hear rather than see the water playing,
the sound of it tumbling,
of it catching air as it falls
and the air giggling as it breaks free.
After a hard freeze, I find places
where the laughter is temporarily trapped,
where the water's surface is silent and solid,
the bubbles visible like some fossilized creature,
nothing like you and me,
no, nothing like us.

Some Comments from Subscribers, and the Author's Response

Shari wrote:
This picture has SO much going on and I could look at it for a long time. I don't know if I'm reading too much into it, but I see bodies, shapes, birth, movement and emotion with a 3D depth. So cool how you captured this. What were you thinking when you shot this? I'd love to know....

Alex wrote:
How many times do we have good ideas, bubbles that rise through our mind, ready to be released to the world, only to be met with cold indifference, forced to remain frozen in our thoughts? I'm curious to hear your motivation for this Prayer. I had some trouble understanding it -- which says more about me than it does about your Prayer! :)

Water falls over boulders and the air joins in, laughing, thrilled with the ride. You can see I am a fan of creeks full of rock.

Peggy: Thanks for the link to Alistar Hamill’s landscape photos of Ireland. Love his shots at twilight and at night.

Shari asks, "What were you thinking when you shot this?" I was thinking with my eyes, letting them roam over the surface of the snow-covered boulders and the ice-covered water. Visual thought is different from analytical thought, which makes it hard to put into words. I look for the unusual, for contrast between lights and darks, lines, shapes, pleasing compositions. At one point I stood and just listened to the sound of the water making its way through the boulders.

Alex says, "I'm curious to hear your motivation for this Prayer.” My answer is to say, somewhat truthfully, that they write themselves. Early on, the prayer was about me listening to the water WORK its way through the boulders. But then I had this idea of the air catching a ride with the falling water and loving it, giggling as it popped back up out of the water. So I changed the word WORK to PLAY in the first line, and then developed the idea that what was frozen was not just air, but laughter. Christians, especially Episcopalians like me, are sometimes called the Frozen Chosen. And I am often much too serious. So it is easy for me to think of myself as frozen, of keeping laughter under glass, so to speak, bottled up. I would be warmer, and not just because we’ve had weeks of sub-freezing weather.